The Stigma (by Koltin Scott)

Chap. XIV

Chapter 14

"Semper Occultus"
(Always Secret)
-the MI6 motto
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AllFall

...15 minutes prior

I came to Salamay's room, shutting the door and yelled out a greeting,

"Salamay? You there?"

Funny, the soldier said she'd be here, a cabin out by itself, well away from the radiation. Inside was a calico cow-skin rug and a few trophy bucks and other miscellaneous cabin ornaments on the walls and window seals. Pretty much the whole cabin was like this save the carpet I was on and different mounted animals throughout. My voice and footsteps echoed through the wooden floors and hallways until I found the woman in the library.

It was a spacious place, and all the mounts had some sort of predator grabbing prey. Something felt ominous about the cougar getting the mallard, or the lynx getting the field mouse, and Salamay's gaze. The gaze was waiting for me with an even more unsettling smirk,

"Hello," she said from under the eagle getting a trout.

She set her book down on the nightstand next to her and stood. Odd enough, she smiled evilly at my shoes and said,

"I love how you tie your shoes," her eyes met mine, "very... 'professional' don't you think Elizabeth?"

A shock harder than electricity hit my brain case.

Elizabeth...

Elizabeth...

Elizabeth...

She knows who I am,

"Funny for a street girl to tie her shoes like a soldier or agent..."

Kill her.

Kill her and say that I found her that way.

Paste her to the ground and snap her neck with a swift stomp and tip a candle over. My hands shot up and I increased gravity to insane levels. However, instead of falling face first cracking her skull on the wood floor she smiled as the floor creaked and groaned. She shook her head making a clicking sound, evil pleasure on her face,

"What if I were faking you out Angel?"

Panic struck me, a trap?!

"Don't worry," she purred as if reading my mind, "the others don't know, but in the bachelor war you gave them reasons to suspect."

"How'd you?"

"What?"

"How'd you-"

"The gravity belt or hacking into the Angelic database?"

I went silent,

"Alien has been suspecting that I can hack but not that I'm better than him or his machines. Your safe little birdy." She said it in a condescending superiority.

"You going to turn me in?"

She pulled out her phone and tossed it to me, "No, I will help you."

A camera had been hacked into on the film room with everyone inside. They had paused the video and were arguing over me,

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because," she hissed, "I want a pet."

"Pet?"

"Maybe a puppet, or a little mole."

I looked back at the activity on the phone in confusion, a soldier was talking to them urgently.

Salamay had a pistol out in case I was trying to fool her, I tossed it to her and didn't move. She glanced at it and said,

"Oh, and when the Baron was implying that you had a remote explosion spider drone attached to your brainstem?" She pointed to her phone with her pistol to say that she could kill me whenever. "I also have a special failsafe in case I die... sooo..." she looked at me with a smile on my face and said after I was still standing there, "the soldier is probably sending someone to get you. If you were suspicious they'd blow your head... sooo... ta-ta!"

She swiveled and went to a room farther back in the house. I waited for the the soldier to come in; running, gasping for air. I checked my phone and a message had been pending for four minutes:

<Report to the film room: Baron and Waya>

Well, so much for sending a soldier to get me...
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